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by Michael Campbell |
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To try out a Fuji S3 camera I asked a scientist/model friend Anne to meet me at Torry Pines State Beach after work. It was 4:30pm where the weather was great for tanning but terrible for portrait photography. The sun glared down from a clear blue sky casting hard shadows and creating highlight destined to burn out to 255 255 255 on the histogram of my trusty Fuji S2. I had heard that the S3 had a wider dynamic range and could keep detail in the highlights. Yeah right! I know Ansel and the Zone System could do it but let’s see any digital camera keep detail at both ends of the tonal curve in good old San Diego afternoon sunshine! Usually I avoid shooting at this time of the day as it is a waste of time unless you want to drag along reflectors, scrims, gobos, and additional fill lights and a crew of assistants to stop everything blowing out to sea. I also borrowed an impressive looking zoom lens from Tamron; the SP AF200-500mm F5-6.3 Di LD (IF) whose appearance tends to make mothers grab their small children and run for cover. I asked Anne to kneel in the sand and I said good bye to her, as I planned to use the lens at 500mm, I told her to keep her cell phone handy so that I could call her when I was ready and tell her when to smile. I set off down the beach. After walking for a little while Anne was a mere speck on the horizon and I checked her out with the lens and found I had a close up of her right ear, whoops!... need to go a bit farther. Poor girl was still kneeling in the sand while waves periodically washed over her as I continued my march. Eventually I got far enough away to be able to shoot at full length. I put the lens on my Carbon Fiber Gitzo tripod and attached the Fuji S3 camera. With the naked eye I could just about see there was a person on the edge of the sea then I took a look through the camera and was amazed to see Anne patiently playing the part of a stranded mermaid. I called her up on her cell phone. "It’s me" I said... "Smile!" I set the camera on Auto Aperture priority at f 6.7 and it figured out an exposure time of 1/350 at a setting of 100 ISO. I put the dynamic range on Auto the contrast on ORG. Later in Photoshop on my G5 I opened the image and found to my surprise that the highlights were detailed and nothing had blown out to 255 even in the frothy surf. The 500mm had isolated the subject from the background and also softened the contrast by compressing the effect of atmospheric haze. For this sort of shot it seems to be a great combination. INGREDIENTS |
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| Image taken with the Fuji
S2 and a standard focal length lens |
Image taken with
the Fuji S3 with the Tamron SP AF200-500mm from the same distance |
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